


follow the strange trails, they'll take you who knows where

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Crossover, Ficlet, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 03:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15186239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “Who is he?” says Finn, quiet, one of these times.“I don’t know,” Rey admits, watching the jury-rigged monitor the med-droid set up, then the steady rise and fall of the stranger’s chest, “but something about him—I couldn’t leave him to die.”or: Rey finds a part of her past, and finds out that Kylo Ren was wrong about her family.





	follow the strange trails, they'll take you who knows where

**Author's Note:**

  * For [words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/gifts).



> title from Lord Huron's "Way Out There".
> 
> originally taken from [here](http://skymurdock.tumblr.com/post/172365506973/oh-shit-a-promptuh-blood), for [words-writ-in-starlight](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/)'s prompt of "7 and 13, blood". it's only tangentially related to blood, sort of.

Rey finds a man in a First Order dungeon with white hair and broken glasses, bleeding and unconscious from a beating. She takes him to the _Falcon_ , which has become something of an unofficial floating base while they search for a planet to establish a real base on, and leaves him to be fussed over by the sole med-droid they have while she, Finn, Rose and Poe confer urgently over the data they’ve been able to gather. In the past few days the Resistance has been able to build its numbers back up, which is great, but also at the same time—

Rey is one of the last of the Jedi. It’s an awesome and awful responsibility to bear, especially for someone who, just months ago, was only a desert scavenger, trying to make it through to the next day and the next day and the next. She wishes Luke were still here to guide her.

(Sometimes she catches sight of a flash of blue, hears a whisper on the wind that sounds like a boy, _you are not the last Jedi._ It helps, but not a lot.)

She drifts back to the man on the cot, a couple of times. His color isn’t good, at first, due to the infection of his wounds, and something pushes Rey into keeping an eye on him, making sure he doesn’t fucking _die_ on them. Maybe it's the Force, or maybe it’s just the ghost of Han Solo in the back of her mind not wanting someone dying on _his ship_. Whatever it is, she keeps wandering back to him.

There’s something familiar about this gaunt, hollow man on the cot, feverish and twitching. And, hell, Rey has never been particularly well-known for being able to restrain her curiosity, although she hopes this time turns out better than trying to turn Kylo Ren back did.

“Who is he?” says Finn, quiet, one of these times. He looks exhausted—he’s been sowing seeds of dissent and rebellion in the Stormtrooper forces, and sometimes it works and the Resistance gets more people, willing to help them out, willing to fight for the galaxy’s freedom. Sometimes it doesn’t, and they all just get shot at.

“I don’t know,” Rey admits, watching the jury-rigged monitor the med-droid set up, then the steady rise and fall of the stranger’s chest, “but something about him—I couldn’t leave him to die.”

“Maybe he’s Force-sensitive,” Finn says. She’s been telling him about how hard it is, to track down Force-sensitive people before the First Order snatches them away, and she is no formal learner. All she has are some books, some ghosts, and the burning desire to see things put right, once more. (He keeps telling her: _you’re not alone, Rey, we’re all here, we can help._ )

“Maybe,” Rey acknowledges, “but it’s deeper than that. It’s something else.”

“What do you think it is?” says Finn.

“I don’t know,” says Rey, a little frustrated by her own inability to know, for sure, why this man seems so _familiar_ to her. There’s something there, she knows it, but it's out of her reach and she can’t quite grasp it. Maybe it’s a Force thing. Maybe Finn’s right and this man is Force-sensitive, although all the others that they picked up didn’t feel so familiar. “I just—I just know I have to keep him safe.”

She’s there when the man wakes up at last, a week after the Resistance first brings him onto the _Falcon_ , and starts to thrash around, yelling for someone named Vex. Rey shoots forward, pins him down by the shoulders, and says, “Don’t move! Your rib is still healing, and you’ve torn a stitch.”

The man blinks at her, eyes wild and wide, stunned.

“You’re safe,” says Rey, using the same tone of voice she’d use on a panicking bantha, on a tired Finn, on a panicking Poe and Rose. “You’re _safe_. You’re on the _Millennium Falcon_ , we’re the Resistance. The First Order can’t hurt you here. I promise.” And if they try, Rey’ll fight every last one of them so this stranger stays safe.

It’s almost instinctual, that thought. It surprises her—why does she need to keep this stranger safe? Who is he to her?

The man keeps blinking at her. Then he says, in a hoarse voice, “My gods. Cassandra?”

Rey frowns at him, and says, “Who’s Cassandra? My name’s _Rey_.”

“No,” says the man, “no, I’d know you anywhere. I’d know my sister anywhere.” He looks up at her, eyes bright with recognition and amazement and hope, and the Force sings: _yes, yes, yes_. “Cass, it’s _me_. It’s Percy.”

**Author's Note:**

> from the tags:
> 
> _#i love this idea so much oh my god #in this au cassandra was kidnapped at five years old from her home planet #and the de rolos weren't able to find her before the briarwoods came calling #percy managed to get out bc of one of his other siblings #and vox machina has been going around being mercenary and shit but also #going up against the first order and its toughest troopers #kylo ren did not actually bother to go looking for the rest of rey's life #despite the fact that some things might've been a giant red flag right there #the fake names. the hurried dumping._


End file.
